(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information transmitting apparatus capable of performing data transmission by way of multiple data transmission paths, and more particularly relates to an information transmitting apparatus having the usual facsimile transmission function and the e-mail facsimile transmission function for transmitting and receiving graphic/original images via the internet.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Recently, facsimile machines which permit transmission and reception of images by a simple operation are widely used in a good many enterprises. However, the facsimile machines have problems in that it is impossible to confirm whether the transmitted documents have been received by the specified addressee and anybody can read the received facsimiles. Further, when faxing overseas or to other places where the connection is bad, it is necessary to repeatedly send the documents many times.
On the other hand, with the current rapid spread and development of the internet or the worldwide network, the number of people, mainly involved in business world, who transmit and receive documents by means of electric mail via the internet has sharply been increasing. Electronic mail is a communication system for transmitting and receiving messages byway of personal computers and workstations, which is able to avoid the above problems involved with facsimile machines.
Under such circumstances, information transmitting apparatus which are capable of performing facsimile communications using e-mail in addition to usual facsimile communications, have been proposed recently (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Hei 8 No.242326, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Hei 9 No.247334, for example).
Of recently developed information transmitting apparatus, there are some which display current job status. In such an apparatus, the current job status is displayed so that the user is able to monitor the operation status of the information transmitting apparatus, from the content of the display list showing the task in progress and the contents of the tasks not in progress but reserved.
Users who use the information transmitting apparatus will have the desire to feel sure that their reservation of document transmission has been correctly made and grasp the reservation status of the designated data transmission path when they designate the transmission.
With an information transmitting apparatus as above which is capable of displaying the current job status, the user is able to check the image frame representing the job status and grasp whether the user's reservation of document transmission is surely made, the reservation status (the state of congestion) of the designated data transmission path, and the like.
However, investigation has not been made in detail into a job status display system that can handle a multiple number of data transmission paths. Actually, in the conventional information transmitting apparatus, regardless of the data transmission path designated by the user being of usual facsimile or e-mail facsimile, the jobs of usual facsimile communications and the jobs of e-mail facsimile communications were displayed in order of the times at which they were designated on the same reservation list as a transmission/reception status display frame.
Therefore, this configuration was inconvenient for the users to check the reservation status. Particularly, in an information transmitting apparatus which establishes an independent information transmitting path for each of usual and e-mail facsimile communications, when an e-mail facsimile communication job is designated after a usual facsimile communication job has been designated, the e-mail facsimile job is displayed after the usual facsimile job though the former is transmitted far faster than the latter, thus leading the user to misunderstand the transmission order of jobs.
Further, since the conventional configuration required the user to take time to select and view the display frame of the job status, a user unfamiliar to the information transmitting apparatus could not check the reservation status of his/her own transmission job, and also in the worst case, they could not even confirm whether the reservation of their own designated job had been correctly made.